Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!ames!ncar!woods
From: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: A Thought Experiment about News.Groups
Message-ID: <3327@ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: 1 Jun 89 19:45:30 GMT
References: <371@odi.ODI.COM> <3400@looking.on.ca> <372@odi.ODI.COM> <3315@ncar.ucar.edu> <375@odi.ODI.COM>
Reply-To: woods@handies.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods)
Organization: Scientific Computing Division/NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 30

In article <375@odi.ODI.COM> benson@odi.com (Benson Margulies) writes:
>In article <3315@ncar.ucar.edu> woods@handies.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods) writes:
>>  Without NO votes, how do you propose to decide whether a group is "properly"
>>named?
>
>Very simply. If 100 people (or 200, or whatever) agree on the name, it
>is presumptively pretty good.

    I don't think that is good enough, because these 100 or 200 people are
probably those who want the group created and don't care what it is named.
I don't think these people should get any more of a voice than those who
are concerned about namespace pollution.

>As Mr. Templeton pointed out, there are
>hardly any NO votes anyway.

   That is true most of the time, but not all of the time. It is false 
in exactly those cases when there is controversy over the name of the group.
Such controversies are NOT always trivial, and they OFTEN generate a lot of
heat on both sides. (remember soc.culture.{china,chinese} or comp.women?)

>Perhaps they serve the
>anti-purpose of egging on certain kinds of useless flaming.

  I claim that the flames will occur whether or not the flamers are allowed
to vote against the group. This is a vacuous argument, apparently intended
solely to disenfranchise the "namespace control" camp by taking away their
right to vote against a group they feel is improperly named.

--Greg